How to enable Material You on ChromeOS Devices

What is Material You theming?

Material You is one of the most popular features in Android OS. With this feature, users can choose some accent color palettes from the wallpaper they used. Google introduced this theming style in Android with Android 12. Though some smartphone brands like LG implemented this feature before, it was not a part of the stock Android OS.

Now Google added it as a part of the Android system so other Android based smartphone manufacturers are interested in implementing this feature.

How Chrome OS Material You looks like

After seeing this much popularity of Material You theming, Google started working on adding this feature to chromeOS. As ChromeOS is also a Linux based OS like Android, there are so many similarities between them. So it would be easy to port the Material You theming from Android to chromeOS.

We already covered the overview of Material You on ChromeOS in one of our previous posts. We shared some screenshots of the UI of ChromeOS after enabling the Material You. We have seen a lot of you are interested in the Material You in ChromeOS. So today I will share with you how to enable Material You on ChromeOS.

Prerequisites

To enable Material You on your ChromeOS device make sure your device fills the following requirements

1. Make sure the Developer Mode is enabled in your ChromeOS device.
2. Make sure you are on latest Developer or Canary Channel.

If your ChromeBook is in Canary/Developer Chanel and the Developer Mode is enabled then you can proceed with the steps below.

Important

But note that the Canary and Developer channels are very unstable and also insecure. Also enabling the Developer Mode will wipe your data on your Chromebook. So keep in mind before you proceed. I’m not recommending it to do on your daily driver. Also do it with your OWN RISK.

This is a working mathod but I am not responsible for if anything goes wrong with your device.

If your Chromebook isn’t in Developer Mode you may follow this tutorial

Follow the tutorial below to join Canary or Developer channel.

How to enable Material You on ChromeOS Devices

To enable the Material You theming on your ChromeBook, follow the steps below properly.

1. First open the Crosh (ChromeOS shell / Terminal) using the key combination Ctrl+Alt+T

2. Once you’re in the Crosh type

shell

and press enter. You will see chromeos@localhost If you don’t see the green text or get any error that means you’re not in Developer Mode. So first enable the Developer Mode according to the above video tutorial.

3. Paste the following commands one after another:

sudo crossystem dev_boot_signed_only=0

sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification

An error will pop up when you do the second Command. Just read and copy the Command given in the screen and paste it into the shell.

4. Restart your Chromebook and let it fully reboot to the system.

5. Enter the ChromeOS Shell and paste these Commands

sudo su
cp /etc/chrome_dev.conf /usr/local/
mount --bind /usr/local/chrome_dev.conf /etc/chrome_dev.conf

Then type and enter the following command

echo "--enable-features=Jelly" >> /etc/chrome_dev.conf

Once you finished the above steps restart the UI by typing the following shell command

sudo restart ui

Then just reboot your Chromebook. Now you should see the Material You is working on your Chromebook.

Credits:

@cr_c2cv

@GabrielBrangers

@emty2001

Rashidul Hasan

Rashidul Hasan, the founder and CEO of AndroidStory, is very passionate about technology.